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Monday, July 30, 2012

Since Indians are one of the most religious people on
the planet, and since they belong to the ‘greatest civilization’, and
since this ‘greatest civilization’ requires constant protection from nefarious influences
of the West, it becomes easy to molest and sexually harass a woman in India and then walk away scot-free, provided one does it the right way. And here are some prescribed methods:

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The report card is out. Mamata Banerjee, the new love of Bengalis
worldwide, is far more Left than the Left.
Mamata Banerjee is not only more Left, she is far less democratic than
the communists of India. She is autocratic,
averse to criticism, and does not tolerate dissent. It is unfortunate that Bengalis are now
thrown from frying pan into fire. But it
is not just Bengalis who should be worried.
In fact, whole of India should be concerned.

What happens in Bengal could happen to India. Bengal is the place where Great Britain installed
their first capital city to create the Indian Empire. Bengalis then led India into our own version
of enlightenment, if there is one. When
most of us in the hinterland lands of India were still dwelling in forests,
Bengalis were discussing Aristotle and Socrates. The sun first shone in Bengal and then over the
rest of India, literally and figuratively.
Bengalis were one of the forerunners of Indian National Movement
contributing many great men and women to the cause. During the 19th century, Bengal’s stars
shone the brightest in the sky. It produced many authors, artists, and scientists. Rabindranath Tagore won Asia’s
first Nobel Prize.

India constantly refers to
many Muslim Presidents they have had to showcase its tolerance and equal
treatment of Muslims. Nowadays many
Indian Hindus repeatedly take the example of our erstwhile President, Abdul
Kalam. They say, ‘Look! We have had a
Muslim as our President. And he was
selected by a Hindu Party!’ By saying this, they want to showcase India as a tolerant
and magnanimous country that allows anyone to become the President of India,
even a Muslim. These Hindus also refer
to the three Khans who dominate Indian Hindi Cinema – Shah Rukh Khan, Salman
Khan and Amir Khan. And they point out
the cricketers like Yusuf Pathan and musician like AR Rahman. They use these examples to say that Muslims
are not discriminated in India, that they are not marginalized, that they get
the same access to education and opportunity, that they are not unequal, that
they are not second-class citizens.

According to these Hindus,
the Muslims are in fact ‘appeased’, they are given certain sops unnecessarily,
like subsidies on Haj, and they are given special treatment unnecessarily, like
special personal laws. These people
think that these ‘appeasing’ measures have a definite purpose - only to win
votes. They believe that Muslims are so
naïve, so innocent that they could be beguiled by such silly sops, like Haj
subsidy, to form a single vote bank.

The recent jokes surrounding introduction of the film
actress Rekha to Rajya Sabha thereby creating Silsila, an old Indian
movie about a triangle love story right inside the Indian Parliament (because
Jaya
Bhacchan was already there), and then other debates on whether Sachin
Tendulkar, the prominent cricket sportsman, should spend his time in Rajya
Sabha instead
of a cricket field throw open some hard questions on the relevance of
Rajya Sabha.

The debate is no longer about who should be allowed or
what qualifications one needs to have to enter into Rajya Sabha. The debate is far more fundamental. Do we even need Rajya Sabha?

The recent debate on whether there should be a common
entrance test for all engineering colleges in India or whether IITs should
continue to maintain their own entrance test throws open various
questions. While IITs refuse to dilute
their admission process maintaining that this process is the key to producing
top class graduates, the government contends that too many entrance tests
burden the students and therefore would like to include the class 12 scores in
the admission process.

I, on the other hand, think that this debate calls for
a completely new look at the admission process to all premier institutes in
India, whether they are IITs, NITs, IIMs, or others.

In our attempt to create islands of excellence we have
created an admission system called entrance tests. Traditionally, in a country where people
swore by their caste affiliations, where nepotism is a virtue, where entire
social system was based on deep rooted discrimination, an entrance test which
judged a person solely on the marks in an entrance test was greeted as a great
achievement. Because of its apparent
benefits, it created a new class of society which now swears by the ‘merit’
system, a new system which measures people solely by one single attribute –
marks obtained in one exam. Now, each
Indian is judged and measured by a number – called marks.